Poor America – Panorama8.30pm, BBC1

Before his election, in a 2007 speech, Barack Obama said, "the poor in urban America suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favour of those with the most money, and influence, and power. How can a country like this allow it? We can't." Then, as now, his Republican opposition accused him of an excess of socialism. Five years on, however, and a million and a half children remain homeless. Panorama reporter Hilary Andersson meets some of the victims of poverty in the richest country on earth. David Stubbs

Whitechapel9pm, ITV1

The score of Whitechapel is approximately 17 times more sinister than what's happening on screen, all screeching violins in minor keys. This is a new mystery following last week's homicidal carpenter. Dismembered body parts are turning up in the anachronistic East End, and Rupert Penry-Jones's buttoned-down, obsessive-compulsive detective is hurled into a world of poison and putrefaction, at the centre of which is a female version of Mr Trebus from A Life Of Grime. Manky. Ben Arnold

Grimm9pm, Watch

New supernatural crime drama from NBC, in which a homicide cop discovers he's the last of a race of monster hunters tasked with defending the world, or at least Portland, Oregon, from fairytale creatures. Aiding him is a reformed troll, keeping his own inner-critter under wraps on "a strict regime of dieting, drugs and Pilates". On the basis of the pilot – a so-so police procedural with some CGI hocus-pocus – we'll have to concede that comics have been pulling this off more successfully for years. But it's early days. Ali Catterall

America's Serial Killer: True Stories10pm, Channel 4

This documentary tells the chilling story of a woman-hating serial killer. Not an unfamiliar tale; but in the process it exposes a sex trade that is alive and well in America's sleepy suburbs, aided by the ease and anonymity of the internet. It lays bare a shocking lack of care in the NYPD when it comes to the protection of escorts – frustrated family members are told that, for sex workers, a search does not begin until 10 days after they are reported missing. A window into a dark world where pimps and drivers speak with unashamed frankness. Clare Considine

Storyville: If A Tree Falls – A Story Of The Earth Liberation Front10pm, BBC4

In December 2005, federal agents arrested Daniel McGowan. He is, to judge by interviews recorded here as McGowan waited to discover whether he'd serve life in prison, a politically committed and intelligent man. He's also a former member of an Earth Liberation Front (ELF) cell, monkeywrenchers who in the 1990s began a series of arson attacks aimed at the logging industry. An extraordinary, Oscar-nominated documentary that, at its heart, tackles the question of how we define terrorism. Jonathan Wright

Spartacus: Vengeance10pm, Sky1

It's not always Spartacus who takes centre stage – everyone gets a chance to shine, and tonight it's mostly Crixus who does all the heavy dramatic lifting, as his quest to find Naevia fractures the rebels. Meanwhile Oenomaus is interrogated by the duplicitous and vicious Ashur, and Lucretia has returned to her old self, more or less. It's quite incredible just how much is packed into each episode – hard to think of anything else on television at the moment that pushes itself so hard in order to entertain. Phelim O'Neill